Join NSLVE

How It Works

NSLVE has formed a partnership with the National Student Clearinghouse, a nonprofit organization established by the higher education community in 1993 to provide educational reporting, verification, and research on behalf of its participating institutions. Over 3,900 colleges and universities in the U.S. send enrollment records to the Clearinghouse, and undoubtedly your institution does too.

Whether an individual registers to vote and votes is a matter of public record. We’re working with Catalist an organization that collects state and local records into one national database that is widely used for academic research. Using a secure system, the Clearinghouse matches your enrollment list with voting records. The records are then de-identified and sent to NSLVE for analysis. NLSVE never sees your students’ name or any other information that would enable us to identify an individual student on your campus. Reports are then sent to one individual as the sole report recipient. NSLVE will not share the institution’s data or report beyond this individual.

Signing up is easy!

For more details on how NSLVE works, see our FAQ. Our most frequently asked questions are:

Is this a survey?
No, simply fill out the authorization form and send it in. You do not need to send us enrollment lists or complete a survey.

Do you learn our students’ names?No. We work with de-identified data. We created a process of marrying enrollment and publicly available voting records through the National Student Clearinghouse, which already has your enrollment lists. The Clearinghouse de-identifies the data before sending it to us. We never see your students’ names.

How much does this cost?Nothing. Thanks to a generous grant, we can offer this service for free.

Do you publish our voting rates?No. The rates provided in a confidential report sent to one individual on your campus whom you designate.

What will we learn?Each participating campus receives a tailored, confidential report reflecting the following:

The number of students eligible to register to vote

The percentage that registered to vote

The percentage that voted and their voting method (traditional or absentee ballot)

Institutions can also receive voting rates broken down by race/ethnicity and gender if they submit this demographic data to the National Student Clearinghouse.

Please note: You do not need to administer or complete a survey. Simply download the authorization form, fill it out, and send it to us. You do not have to share with us your enrollment lists and NSLVE will never see individual students’ names.

Below is a snapshot of the cover page of a sample campus report. View a complete sample report here.